As drone use has risen, so has the common man’s annoyance with drones and law enforcement’s concern about them, to the point where people are training eagles to snatch them and passing laws to pick them off. SkyWall solves the problem in a rather unique way, though, naming firing drones at drones out of an air cannon.
It’s fairly simple, really, if you’ve ever used a potato gun. An air cannon with a laser targeting system is pointed at the drone, and you fire a smart projectile at it. The projectile senses when it’s close to the drone and drops a net on it; as the drone falls, a parachute on the net triggers and lets the drone drift to Earth, where waiting authorities can look it over or angry old people can put it in their basements with all the Frisbees and baseballs that have landed on their yards. It has a good range, too, — 330 feet — and has an eight-second reload time.
The company behind this, OpenWorks Engineering, hopes to have the SkyWall on sale by the end of the year. But we hope it’s earlier, if for no other reason than a cannon that fires drones at drones has a joyous redundancy to it. Maybe they could have an accessory where a drone goes to pick up the drone you caught with a drone!
(Via Mashable)